TGIF

Wow, another week has come and gone. Why is it that the older you get, the faster time goes by? Just when you start appreciating the things that life has to offer, life goes by at warp speed. How do you convey this phenomenon to your kids so that they learn to cherish every waking moment and not take life for granted?

This is a birthday weekend, for both my daughter and myself. She was born 19 years ago, the day before I turned 30. You do the math. I don't celebrate my birthday anymore. It's a lot easier to celebrate hers instead. It's less depressing that way......

Let's review the past week:

• The price of gas has remained steady at $4.45 a gallon in my neck of the woods. It's frightening to think that at some point in the future this price is going to seem incredibly cheap.

• The temperature is going down, down, down from the incredible highs of 102' for the past week. "Normal" summertime weather patterns are settling in which means for those who don't live in No. Calif., fog in the morning (cold), warm in the afternoon, fog in the evening (cold).

• I spent a wonderful weekend in San Francisco with a good friend, celebrating the 4th of July. We never saw the fireworks; the fog rolled in thick and cold before nightfall and I didn't want to freeze my ass off watching fireworks shrouded by wet, damp air. For what is fog but clouds close to the ground.

• The Bachelorette chose the wrong guy. The loser, Jason I think was his name, was so darn cute and gushy and all the things that make a woman swoon. Let's see how long the "engagement" lasts with the winner. I can't even remember his name. I didn't tune into the show at all during the season, but lacking anything else on tv, my daughter and I decided to watch the season finale. I think these reality shows impart some sick voyeuristic tendencies in otherwise normal people.

• The fires in California continue to burn, threatening more houses and unoccupied areas. I don't know how or when the firefighters will get the fires under control. It seems like a daunting task and one for which I applaud their efforts and bravery. Personally, I think I'd run the other way. Fire scares me.

• I got phone call from another attorney representing my husband's ex-wife. Seems she was a little miffed I canceled her son's health insurance benefits. The attorney thought that COBRA rights were not offered (it wasn't a COBRA event) and should have been. Well, long story short, she misrepresented herself to my insurance carrier as me and got information that was in violation of my HIPAA rights. The son wasn't eligible for continuation of coverage but was told incorrectly by the carrier that he was and so it goes.... I just want these people out of my hair. It's been very hard to deal with all the legal issues surrounding my husband's death (more on this later, very later) and this woman has made my life nothing short of miserable for the past 10 months.

Grumblings

Have you seen the Sex in the City movie? You know when the character Charlotte swallows water in Mexico? You know the grumblings that she experienced post swallow? C'est moi, aussi, and I didn't even get to go to Mexico. I don't know what I ate or drank to make my stomach churn as it's doing now, but it's a helluva lot better than the pukey feeling I experienced all day yesterday.

I'm jumping way ahead of my little chronicles of my life with alcoholic husbands, but it's my blog and I can do whatever I want....

My second husband's ex contacted me, again, through another attorney. I won't go into details now, just suffice it to say that I don't want to have any further interactions with this woman. None, nada, rien, zip, get the idea? I have tried to take the high road through my myriad of interactions with this woman, but my patience is being tested. Really tested. Really, really tested.

I'm working on my 4th step inventory in my Al-Anon program and I'm really trying to work around my resistant, adversarial relationship with "her", but even the Al-Anon program isn't helping me now. I am pissed off. I wish she would just piss off. I wish I didn't have to keep thinking about doing the next right thing. I want to be bad, really bad and tell her to f-off. I am a better person than that. So, I won't - not now, at least.

If the Al-Anon program has done nothing else for me, it has made me very aware of my thinking, stinking as it may be. Even though I am reacting the way I really feel, nagging me in the back of my mind is the notion that I could be doing things differently, better. I am not going to make excuses for my behavior or at least my thoughts, but I have a lot of really good reasons to be so miffed, to put it politely. I really, really, really don't like thinking or acting this way. It goes against all that I am working towards.

Crap..........